A long time ago (1986) I was staying with my buddy on a stateside USAF base. He worked in communications and they had a problem because they were going to run out of paper before his next shift. I asked him if we couldn’t just drive to the nearby town, buy some paper, and just donate it to the cause. He said that would be impossible. Why? Why not just buy some paper and use it?
I have no idea why this question popped back into my head after all these years.
Was it the fact that he couldn’t get reimbursement for it? Even many private companies have procurement rules that require employees to get advance permission before buying supplies or equipment off the shelf for official use. The consequences of failing to get the permission was mostly that your supervisor wouldn’t approve the items on your expense report and thus you would end up paying for them out of pocket. Nobody minded if you brought in stuff like pencils, pens, paper, or binders - the company just wouldn’t pay you for them. Computer equipment (which could have viruses, backdoors, or employee-known admin passwords) were sometimes restricted. But TP? Was this a health concern?
Possibly he knew that the DoD gets plenty of public money and that if they squander it and run out of office supplies, they should suffer some unpleasant consequences rather than getting used to “donations to the cause.”
This is the same in my civilian federal agency. You are forbidden from making the government an “involuntary creditor” by attempting to donate goods or services of value without the government’s approval.
Back in 1986, they may also have still been using ‘government letter’ size paper which was smaller than standard letter size.
Ronald Reagan changed the US government to standard letter in the 80s- I just don’t recall when in that decade he did it. I do remember it caused quite the ruckus in government offices all across the land as people were suddenly unable to store paper as there were now thousands of obsolete trays and drawers that were half an inch too small.
I’m sorry, I misspoke: The “donor” becomes the involuntary creditor (if he seeks reimbursement). The involuntariness is that the government did not consent to the transaction. The government discourages donations, because of the danger that the donor might later insist he was a just a creditor and seeking reimbursement.
The GAO has a PDF document on the topic, starting at pg 12-142 (pg 155): http://www.gao.gov/assets/200/196723.pdf
+1 to the above. The DOD prevents free donations to prevent abuse, corruption, appearance of bribery / favoritism etc. At question is also the funding site. The bean counters only permit OTS purchases under certain circumstances because they don’t want a unit to blow their cash on stuff from Best Buy that they can probably get cheaper through a government supply contract. When a budget is written they don’t just hand the supply guy a credit card and let him go nuts.
Now, if you are talking about someone taking their own personal money and buying office supplies, this happens all the time. We prefer to avoid it obviously, but sometimes you are just stuck and have to pay for something “out of pocket” without expectation of reimbursement. It might make the lawyer cringe, but sometimes you have to do it to get the job done.
Of course, this also raises the question of fairness… For example, what if a soldier came into some money and donated lots of stuff to the unit? Would that go on his NCOER? Would other soldiers feel obligated to donate supplies just so they could level the playing field for promotion? When you look at it that way, it very easily could lead to a culture of corruption.
I would also WAG that the government had a contract with Acme Paper, Inc. that specified that Acme would supply all of the office supplies for the military. Going to Best Buy and buying a ream would be a breach of that contract…
And if it became an institutional practice for staff members or soldiers to “donate” equipment, then it could become an expectation.
E.g., “Private Jones, the Lieutenant never gives us enough bullets. You’re gonna need to find some room in your paycheck to buy them. If you don’t, you won’t be able to meet the Captain’s expectations and that could hurt your chances of making Corporal.”
JWOD basically says that all US government agencies must purchase office supplies from companies that employ blind people. Government purchase card holders are therefore required to get pens from skillcraft and the like, rather than popping on down to Staples. However, in the situation described in the OP, they would have been able to. You just need to justify why you’re going outside approved channels, and mission stoppage is a pretty good justification. If it kept happening, maybe there’d be a problem.
FWIW, in ages past this was exactly what happened.
Ever heard of “Buying a commission?” Armies did this during past eras as a way of keeping the riff-raff out of the Officer’s corps. In addition, the officer was expected to subsidize his unit to a certain extent. Linking rank to wealth was a way of making sure the Officer could purchase supplies for the unit beyond the bare minimum the government provided.
Some of the officers did not hesitate to abuse this system. For example, an officer might declare that all soldiers in his regiment were to wear a certain decoration or hat or something… which of course he sold to them at profit.
Not that AAFES is much different.
For most supplies it just needs to be a GSA approved vendor (which takes into account the JWOD that I mentioned above), but this is exactly correct for IT equipment. When I was a card holder we had to buy computers from Dell as long as they met our requirements, even if we found an HP that was several hundred dollars cheaper. Also, we weren’t allowed to make the purchase ourselves, just to make sure we didn’t violate the contract.
When did the military stop using the cool watermarked paper? I liked that eagle watermark. Prior to the miltiary stopping the usage of said paper, it’d be kind of hard to obtain it at your local office supply store.